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10 of the world’s best mobile commerce checkouts

We’ve previously highlighted 11 great ecommerce checkouts, and now it’s time to see which brands have managed to create top notch, user-friendly mobile checkouts.

Given the disparity between conversion rates on desktop compared to mobile, it’s perhaps understandable that retailers might put more effort into optimising their desktop checkout.

However as mobile conversions are so hard to come by, you really need to make their purchase journey as comfortable as possible.

These are by no means the very finest mobile checkouts in the world, and I’d actually be interested to read your nominations should you wish to add them in the comments section.

But these retailers have proved to be better than most when it comes to mobile checkout design.

Firstly, here are the criteria I look for…

Speed. Mobile users don’t have a lot of patience and, if using 3G, might have a slow internet connection. Therefore speed is of the essence.

No forced registration. Forcing new users to create an account is proven to cause basket abandonment, and this problem will only be magnified on mobile.

Security reassurance. Research shows that many people are wary of entering card details on mobile, so retailers should make efforts to reassure their customers.

Easy form filling. It’s incredibly fiddly to fill in forms on a mobile, so sites should make it as easy as possible. This means big text fields and big buttons.

Progress indicators. A progress indicator helps reassure shoppers that the checkout process will be over soon.

Remove distractions. In the event that someone actually wants to buy something on your mobile site it’s a good idea to allow them to focus on the task in-hand, so remove all distractions and superfluous links.

And now, here are the retailers…

AO.com

As a simpleton with fat thumbs, I like mobile checkouts to have large text fields and massive buttons.

AO.com doesn’t let me down. The buttons are huge.

AO.com also scores points for keeping form filling to a minimum, accepting alternative payment methods and allowing users to select their delivery time and date from a dropdown menu.

All-in-all it’s one of the most user-friendly checkouts that I’ve seen.

Crate & Barrel

Big buttons and big text fields, this is what I love about Crate & Barrel’s mobile checkout.

It also uses a numerical keypad for phone numbers.

One criticism would be that there isn’t a progress bar so users don’t know how many stages are left in the checkout process.

Topshop

Topshop has a clean and simple checkout with a prominent progress bar so users know exactly where they are in the whole process.

There is also a guest checkout option, postcode lookup tool and numerical keypads when relevant.

However the design could be improved by making the buttons bigger and by removing an unnecessary form that appears prior to payment screen so users can confirm their billing address.

Hem is the new high-end furniture ecommerce site from the team that brought you Fab.com.

It aims to deliver designer furniture at affordable prices by cutting out the middleman.

And if that sounds familiar, it’s because Made.com has been doing the same thing for several years, so Hem will have to try and differentiate its offering – it will have to re-disrupt the online furniture market.

Hem is currently taking pre-orders so all items will take a minimum of six weeks to be shipped, and it will also be launching a customisable design tool in the near future.

One of the biggest barriers for customers about to use a checkout is forcing them to register their details first.

Presenting them with page after page of forms in which they need to fill out the most unnecessary of personal details is a quick way to send your customers to the exit, leaving many abandoned baskets and lowering your conversion.

Then along came Apple and its beautifully designed products that practically sold themselves with almost zero marketing effort.

What came next was a huge amount of mediocre products needing ever-increasing budgets in order to highlight differences and features that may not have existed in the first place.

User experience designer and CEO of Clearleft Andy Budd believes that product and marketing teams need to work closer together and that the relatively new field of User Experience Design is the glue to achieve that.

I spoke to Andy Budd about all matters relating to UX last week.

Andy Budd is also one of the speakers at Econsultancy’s Festival of Marketing in November. Our two day celebration of the modern marketing industry also featuring speakers from LEGO, Tesco, Barclays, FT.com and more.